How to Cut an Artichoke

True story, from the wedding of two friends, circa 1977: The bride’s father, a louche sophisticate, and perhaps needless to say an alcoholic, asked of the groom’s grandmother, a Russian immigrant of peasant stock, “Isn’t eating an artichoke just like sex?” There was, as you can imagine, no reply.

The artichoke has always inspired such lyrical flights. Is it not the most versatile of vegetables as well as the most miraculous? Is it not incredible that this thistle keeps its treasure so well hidden and protected that people can spend their lives blissfully eating only the outer leaves, never getting past the choke to the heart?

Rhetorical questions, I recognize. But once you know how to handle an artichoke, it will pretty much do your bidding, providing you with salads, sautés and remarkable centerpieces that are unique in just about every respect.

It’s almost all in the trimming, because cooking artichokes (or eating them raw) is the simple part. Getting them ready for cooking may require several different processes, which can leave you with a whole artichoke, ready for stuffing (or simply steaming); just the heart, which can be cooked however you like or sliced and served raw; or something in between, like cleaned and quartered artichokes, which are the basis for any number of preparations.

All of these techniques deal in different ways with the removal of the so-called choke, that tightly knit package of slender threads at the thistle’s core, any one of which is capable of getting stuck in your throat and providing extreme discomfort (though no real health threat). You can scoop the choke right out with a spoon, you can quarter the artichoke and trim it out with a small knife or you can cut right down to the heart and just lop the choke off. With practice, you can do it like the guys at Venice’s Rialto Market. They manage to prune and core an artichoke in about nine seconds.

If you’re not trying to set a speed record, these preparations are all easy enough. After that, there’s only the cooking and the eating — whether sexy or not is for you to determine.

A version of this article appears in print on April 21, 2013, on page MM44 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: I Heart
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